


If Your Name is Castiel

by lizbobjones



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Florist Dean, M/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Shy Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-25 18:12:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7542850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizbobjones/pseuds/lizbobjones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is probably a trap, Castiel thought, looking at the sign.</p><p>“If your name is Castiel, stop in today for a free rose”</p>
            </blockquote>





	If Your Name is Castiel

**Author's Note:**

> [original post & link to prompt](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/146770932818/if-your-name-is-castiel)

This is probably a trap, Castiel thought, looking at the sign.

“If your name is Castiel, stop in today for a free rose”

Winchester and Sons florist was not just part of his walk to and from work - it felt like part of his daily routine, somewhere along the level of importance as the stop to buy coffee a minute earlier. 

In the morning he passed by as the shop was still opening, and if he was running late, it would be in time to wave good morning to the taller of the brothers as he brought out buckets and trays of flowers to sit in the sun, exchanging the pleasant “hi”s of acquaintances who saw each other often enough for one word conversations and nothing more. 

If Cas made good time and got a better start, he could pass the shop as the elder brother was washing the windows and singing to himself off-tune, and that fleeting encounter could make any sort of terrible day at the office somehow bearable.

If he spotted Cas coming too soon he would stop singing before Cas could hear him clearly, but they shared an awkward smile that Cas would carry with him for the rest of the day.

Occasionally he wouldn’t be spotted at all, and he could walk right past, and catch the song that the sponge squeaked in time to on the windowpane. It always felt wrong to miss out on the smile and be mistaken for any old pedestrian, but the tunes Cas didn’t even know hung in his head and somehow everything would go right that day.

Once he was walking past and was spotted only at the last moment - the ensuing confusion resulted in the freckled man trying to stop singing in a panic, but also turn to smile at Cas, all while balancing on a step ladder alongside a bucket of soapy water. It ended in disaster. Cas watched him topple down in alarm, and when Cas was over his shock, he rushed to help the hapless florist up. 

But when he was standing again, dripping wet and blushing as red as the roses their shop specialised in, he’d croaked out a “I need to, um…” gesturing his soaked clothes, and dashed back into the shop without another word, and before Cas could even introduce himself, as he’d been hoping to for months. 

Cas gave him several minutes to return, until he saw the little brother approaching with the trestle table they put the plants on outside in his arms. Cas felt a sudden shock of embarrassment at the thought of being caught loitering, and hurried on his way to work.

The next day Cas has pushed himself to leave early, but to his disappointment, the taller brother, his long hair pulled back in a little ponytail for the job, was the one out front washing the window (and actually able to reach it all from standing on the floor). When he waved hello, Cas stopped this time, glancing through the shady window.

“Is your brother okay?”

He got a laugh in return. “His pride is a bit bruised, but he’ll be fine.”

“I didn’t tell anyone about it, though it would be an amusing anecdote.”

“That’s… pretty noble of you. I’d have told everyone.” He paused. “I did tell everyone. Sam, by the way.”

“Castiel.”

Sam’s eyebrows shot up. “Not a common name.”

Cas gave that the usual long-suffering eye-roll that came whenever anyone mentioned his name.

“I’d better get to work.”

“Right.”

Cas got all the way to his drab office building before realising Sam hadn’t even told him his brother’s name.

*

Coming home from work featured a point of interest on Cas’s map of the day at Winchester and Sons too.

He’d always been fond of walking past in the early evening, even before he had started making eye contact with the shopkeepers, usually not long before they closed up. At least then he got to see the flowers set out properly, maybe their numbers languishing on a good day for business, but still bright splotches of colour to wake him up after all day looking at reports and spreadsheets.

And unless he’d been trapped in a meeting that had run on for an eternity, he could see their chalkboard sign they put out each day, with an elaborate hand-drawn chalk drawing of a random type of flower they sold, and a message often chosen just to be uplifting rather than to sell flowers.

It was probably a bit pathetic how much a reminder to have a good day from a florists meant to him, but he always felt like they earnestly believed it.

Not long after the step ladder incident, and Cas hadn’t seen the cuter brother outside since - he was walking home on a Friday that he only belatedly realised was right before a major greeting card holiday.

The sign outside the shop that afternoon read, “If your name is Mary, stop in today for a free rose.”

He slowed his walk to a crawl to read it five times over, then peered through the windows. It was always darker in the shop, shadowy because of the high shelves full of many more plants. But he could make out spiky hair on the figure at the counter, so he had made up his mind to do something brave, and went inside.

By the time the bell had finished ringing and Cas’s eyes had adjusted to the gloom, he caught the trail end of a noisy commotion, and Sam was standing behind the counter.

They blinked at each other in mutual confusion, and Cas tried not to let his eyes drift to the staff door behind the counter.

Finally, Sam spoke, clearly trying hard to sound like Cas was just a regular customer. “Uh, can I help you?”

“Oh. Um. I was just wondering about the sign. Not that I am called Mary, as you know. I - um.” He glanced at the door again - it was definitely cracked open in a rather obvious way.

Sam’s smile reappeared, softer and more wistful than his cheerful morning smiles. “It’s our mother’s name. She, uh, she died when I was a baby. But we do something every year in the shop for her. She was the one who started it, and she loved these roses…” He gestured a bucket of their bright red roses right by the counter. “We thought we’d do something different for her this year, since we had a lot of her favourite roses.”

“Oh. It’s mother’s day this weekend.”

Sam nodded.

Cas looked around in an awkward panic, the conversation now entirely beyond what he’d expected, in a terrifying dark depths of the ocean way. “That’s… really kind of you.”

“Ah, well, it was Dean’s idea.”

Cas glanced towards the door again, but Dean was clearly going to wait this out. Cas grabbed the nearest small potted plant from a shelf. “I should buy this and… go.”

Aside from Sam rather helplessly trying to tell him how not to kill the baby spider plant Cas had grabbed, they didn’t exchange many more words.

*

To his surprise, the next week on Monday evening the sign had a similar message. “If your name is Ellen, stop in today for a free rose.”

He had to know. He went in and caught Sam being pushed into the room, the door shutting on Dean before Cas would get a glimpse of more than his arm pulling the door closed. He really was never going to let himself live down the stepladder thing.

“Ellen?” Cas asked, too distracted by Dean to think of a tactical way to approach this conversation, despite the accidental over-share of traumatic past that he’d walked into last time.

“Ah, well, we had such a good reaction from giving away roses to Marys this weekend, we thought, why not keep doing it? And loads of cute girls came in, but Dean said it was weird they all had our mother’s name.”

“…Oh.”

“So today it’s our adoptive mother who finished raising us after both our father died too,” Sam finished, still grinning at him, but Cas felt too confused and foolish after the ‘cute girls’ comment to take in the conversation. More like he was having an intense out of body experience from sheer embarrassment in the middle of the shop, floating up near the garlands over the door. Dean probably was just that socially awkward and hated Cas for making him feel so stupid about it by showing up all the time.

“… You wait until what I’m going to put on the sign next week,” Sam was saying.

“I have to get home,” Cas interrupted.

*

He didn’t drop by to ask the story of “If your name is Bobbie…” all next week, or Jo the week after.

On the week that anyone called Charlie was getting free roses, Cas’s new early to work policy to avoid the Winchesters altogether failed; running late and worn out by the project at work he’d buried himself in, he had to run the gauntlet past the shop as it was opening. 

Sam gave him a perplexed look, and asked if his spider plant was okay.

“It’s wilting and brown,” Cas said grumpily, without slowing down as he powered past him, sipping his dangerously hot coffee to avoid follow up questions.

*

The next week, when Sarahs were getting free roses, Sam stopped Cas in the street in the afternoon, and gave him a bottle of plant food, on the house.

*

Amelias, Megs, Rubys and Jess got their flowers, and then for a couple of weeks the noticeboard was back to the generic affirmative messages again.

At least his spider plant had started growing rapidly and taking over the window ledge in his kitchen.

*

And then, on a rather dreary grey Thursday, out of nowhere after a week of inspirational quotes about bees that had not done anything to entice Cas to start saying hello again despite his approval of the subject, Cas was trudging home, head low, trying not to look at the windows, and he spotted a name on the board that made his stomach leap.

“If your name is Castiel, stop in today for a free rose.”

This is probably a trap, Castiel thought, looking at the sign.

Unless “Castiel” suddenly had a surge in popularity he’d never known about, like how there were a ton of babies called “Khaleesi” because of a TV character.

He looked through the shop window, but couldn’t see anyone behind the counter at all.

Definitely a trap.

He heart was pounding as he pushed the door open and peered inside. There was definitely a muffled argument occurring on the other side of the door.

Cas looked at the shelves of pot plants and wondered if he should buy his spider plant a friend, now that he’d brought it back from the dead and considered himself something of an expert gardener.

The door to the back room opened and Dean emerged with the sort of momentum that has a shove behind it. His hair had been awkwardly combed flat like a boy going to his first school dance, and he was bright red, clutching a long-stalked red rose in front of him like a shield. He blinked at Cas, a deer in headlights.

“Don’t worry, there isn’t anything for you to fall off,” Cas heard himself saying.

To his relief, Dean cracked a smile at that before Cas could mentally kick himself all the way back out of the shop, and he seemed to relax a little.

“I, um. This seemed to work for Sam… Eventually… So, uh…” He held out the rose a bit more obviously. “Did you come in here for your free rose?”

Cas took it from him and held it awkwardly at his side, not sure what he was supposed to do with it after that. “Actually… I came in here to finally get to say hello to you.”


End file.
